Hyperspectral light field (H-LF) imaging is part of a class of techniques commonly referred to as spectral imaging or spectral analysis. The H-LF imaging collects and processes information from across the electromagnetic spectrum. A hyperspectral camera/sensor collects information as a set of H-LF images. Each image represents a narrow wavelength range of the electromagnetic spectrum, also known as a spectral band. These images are combined to form a hyperspectral data-cube for processing and analysis. The goal of H-LF imaging is to obtain the spectrum for each pixel in the image of a scene with narrow spectral bands over a continuous spectral range. Every pixel in the image thus can be used to characterize the objects in the scene with great precision and detail.
The H-LF images provide much more detailed information about the scene than a normal color camera. The H-LF imaging leads to a vastly improved ability to classify the objects in the scene based on their spectral properties. It can also take advantages of the spatial relationships among the different neighboring spectra, allowing more elaborate spectral-spatial models for a more accurate segmentation and classification of the image.
In this disclosure, we present a new method for generating complete hyperspectral data-cubes from captured H-LF images.